1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for editing documents which revise a document such that its elements are properly put together and arranged.
2. Description of the Background Art
Lately, a number of propositions have been made for a pattern generator utilizing a computer capable of generating patterns from a variety of data such as graphic data, image data, and color data, for the purpose of preparing such things as presentation documents, public announcements, or brochures. Along with such pattern generators, there are various types of multi-functional editors for editing data obtained from any one of a plurality of source media being developed.
Yet, such a multi-functional editor becomes progressively complicated in order to accommodate diverse commands and functions as the number of types of data it deals with increases. As a result, mastering skillful maneuvers of such a multi-functional editor tends to require an enormous amount of training to be able to take full advantage of its superior faculty, and even with such skills it is often necessary to spend a great deal of effort and time in dealing with a complicated situation.
On the other hand, there are some types of document editing systems which edit a given document in a prescribed manner automatically by analyzing logical and referential structures of the document, such as the one reported by I. Iwai, M. Doi, and M. Fukui in "On the Document Structure Generating Function of the intelligent Document Editing System" appearing in `The Proceedings of the 34th General Conference of the Japanese Society of Information Processing`, pp. 1309-1310, 1987, and that disclosed in Japanese patent application No. S61-21570(1986) in which corresponding descriptions and drawings are put together automatically on the same page by means of a referential word in the descriptions.
However, such a document editing system so far has not been able to produce a satisfactory result with respect to orderliness because of the lack of coherence and balance among various data from different sources. Consequently, it has conventionally been necessary to perform very complicated editing operations in order to achieve satisfactory results.